
EDUCATION AND DUTY 



■ 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 

Delivered before the 
Manchester University Education Society 

SIR WILLIAM MATHER, Hon. LL.D. (Princeton) 
On December 3rd, 1907 



Published by Request 



MANCHESTER 

At the University Press 

Sherratt & Hughes, Publishers to the University of Manchester 

1908 




Class U2>«fri 
Book ^ 



ITiKSKNTICD !!Y 



3 *v~ > * ~*~-~ 



EDUCATION AND DUTY. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY EDUCATION SOCIETY 

BY 

SIR WILLIAM MATHER, 

Hon. LL.D. (Princeton), 
December 3RD, 1907. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



MANCHESTER 

At the University Press 
1908 






V.K 



Gift 

*£fo» Dui-versi*-" 
JAN 17 1910 



NOTE. 

From several quarters the request reached me, after the 
delivery of this Presidential Address, that it should be 
published, and Sir William Mather has placed the Society 
under still greater obligation by the readiness with which 
he has undertaken to issue the address in pamphlet form. 
We who heard it are glad to read it again, and we feel 
that the lofty, and at the same time practical, presentation 
of the educational ideal, will be a stimulus to all who are 
enabled to peruse it. And, if I may venture to say so, it 
is especially worthy of attention in scholastic and academic 
circles ; we who live by teaching are always prone to 
exhibit those reactionary tendencies which our President 
combats in this address. 

The special value of such a contribution appears to me 
to lie in its disclosure of personal motives and ideals. 
Sir William Mather has lived his life before the public 
eye, untiringly active and eminent in at least three fields 
of public service : in education, in politics, and in manu- 
facture. Where, in such a career, are we to seek for the 
underlying motives? Where does a man, whose lively 
energy in thought and action has touched so many fields, 
find the principles, the sentiments which feed the flame? 
This address answers that question, and the moral need 
not be laboured by me. 

J. J. FlNDLAY. 

February 1st, 1908. 

The University Education Society, 

Manchester. 



Education and Duty. 



I beg to thank you, the Committee and Members of the 
Manchester University Education Society, most heartily 
for the honour you have conferred upon me by electing me 
the first President of the Society. I fear, however, that 
you have thereby incurred much responsibility, if you 
depend on your President for any degree of success. I 
trust, nevertheless, that we may share and share alike both 
the honour you have conferred and the responsibility you 
have incurred during my year of office. 

No one can welcome more heartily than I do the forma- 
tion of the Society, or sympathize more sincerely with its 
spirit and purpose. It is another indication of the steady 
growth in the interest for Education which is spreading 
throughout the country. The longer I live, the more am 
I convinced that true Education is the greatest thing in 
the world, the " Summum Bonum " of human progress and 
regeneration, and the hope of mankind's redemption from 
the rampant evils that descend through hereditary channels 
from generation to generation. The harmless, if void, 
promises made by godparents at baptismal ceremonies, 
that they will be sponsors for the helpless infant's rejection 
of " the World, the Flesh and the Devil," until he or she 
be confirmed and assume self-responsibility, denote the 
traditional belief that the World is beset with evil, the 
Flesh is prone to evil, the Devil is the incarnation of evil, 
and that the embryo man is and always will be rough-cast 
to do or die in a world inevitably and necessarily breathing 
with evil. If true, it would be a terrible fate and a 



6 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

hopeless world. Happily, it is not true. The ceremonies 
which seem to justify this ghastly belief were inaugurated 
when human life was held in the grip of ignorance and 
barbarism, and the resultant superstition created abject 
fear among those who piously and sincerely sought to 
stem the tide of increasing misery and depravity. All 
honour to their memory ! 

Since the revelation of the Divine Will through the 
life of Christ, and the innumerable other rays of light 
from the Sun of Righteousness — which is the process of 
evolution — have dispelled the darkness around Mankind's 
early development, the world, the civilized world, has 
gradually rejected many superstitions. There is a grow- 
ing belief in the perfectibility of human nature. The old 
cry still remains as an excuse among those who do not wish 
to be perfected that " Human Nature is always the same 
and always will be," or " What's the good of trying ? " 
We know, however, to a certainty, from history and 
experience, that Love and Wisdom do abound in the 
world to-day, pure and undefiled, though far from all- 
prevailing. We know that the flesh is not wholly and 
absolutely weak, as it was in the dark days of barbarism, 
and we see that even the mythical devil is not so black as 
he was painted when superstitions reigned over Mankind. 

We feel in our day something of the sentiment expressed 
in the lines : — 

" The world is full of beauty like other worlds above, 
And did man but do his duty, it might be full of love." 

Ah ! There's the rub ! 

" If man did but do his duty " — and that brings me to 
my subject — 

" Education and Duty." 

It is a remarkable fact — almost a paradox — that notwith- 
standing England's achievements in the history of the 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 7 

world, she is the latest of the foremost countries to apply 
herself to the educational progress of the masses of her 
people. The oldest of all existing civilized Nations, she 
is the youngest in providing facilities for the intellectual 
development of her citizens. The first nation to establish 
practically universal manhood suffrage as the basis of 
government, she was the last to establish universal child- 
hood education in order to train up an intelligent electorate. 
The first kingdom to govern the people for the people 
through the people, she was the last to attempt to form a 
wise and understanding people. 

England is the most stable and firmly fixed of all 
civilized countries. She controls and governs the most 
extensive Empire, and is responsible for the welfare of the 
greatest number of human beings of varied races. She 
has developed to a greater extent than any other nation 
her mineral resources, her trade, industry, commerce, 
shipping, manufacture. She has discovered in Science 
the greatest of Nature's secrets, and has applied them by 
her inventive genius to the welfare of mankind. In all 
material resources that make a nation rich and powerful 
she stands the highest. And yet she has left almost un- 
developed the great intellectual resources latent in the 
millions of the working-classes, and depended, until quite 
recently, on the knowledge and learning of the few who 
were privileged to have access to ancient and endowed 
institutions or to private voluntary schools of an expensive 
character. 

England's greatest compeers at the present time in all 
that has made her gre.it are America and Germany, and 
they have long forestalled her in drawing upon the intellec- 
tual resources of their citizens by the universal and free 
instruction of the children of their working-classes; and 
notwithstanding political revolutions, invasions, civil wars, 
and chaotic distractions of all sorts, they opened to the 
people schools, colleges and Universities, throughout their 



8 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

countries, long years before we did. I remember being 
profoundly impressed, when visiting America for the first 
time in 1883, with the Declaration of the Independence of 
the United States — that imperishable document setting 
forth the duties and responsibilities of a self-governing 
people. The paragraph that struck me most was one re- 
lating to Education, which declared that for a self- 
governing Nation to be strong and permanent, it was vital 
to its existence that the people from the bottom should be 
educated so as to understand and act up to their responsi- 
bilities ; therefore, Education was the first duty of every 
State in the Union. We cannot discuss to-night the ex- 
planation of these strange differences of opportunity for 
the masses of the people between these countries and our 
own. Suffice it that England is awake at last ; the blinds 
are drawn up, and the spirit of Education is gradually 
inspiring us to make up for lost time. 

As we are the last of the great nations to adopt a 
national system of education, which means the develop- 
ment of the intellectual resources of all our people, we 
have the great advantage of avoiding what is imperfect in 
systems that have been at work for generations elsewhere, 
and whose defects are known. With a similar advantage 
Germany and America, generations after us, undertook 
development of their material resources by adopting and 
improving the means and methods we had found to be the 
most practical up to that time for our enormous output to 
supply the wants of the world. My studies and observa- 
tions concerning the great problems of life, and the ex- 
perience common to us all of the enormous waste of the 
infinite intellectual and spiritual forces with which man 
is endowed, have led me to the settled conviction that 
Education is the anchor of mankind's safety; the nurse, 
guide, and guardian of all its inherited moral powers ; and 
the soul of its progress towards a nobler and happier 
condition of human society. This consummation, which 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 9 

we all devoutly wish, depends upon the meaning we attach 
to Education, and the extent of its application in training 
the Children of the Nation. 

I will venture to lay before you the meaning I have 
adopted. It is not original, nor am I an expert on this 
question, as you well know. I base my meaning on the 
teachings of German, British and American writers : 
Pestalozzi, Rein, Locke, Spencer, Huxley, Playfair, Dr. 
John Brown, Sadler, Horace Mann, Murray Butler, Elliott, 
Woodward, Emerson and others, among whom are not a 
few poets; and also on some personal experience of my 
own. 

Education is life, inasmuch as it means the continuous 
growth and evolution of our inherited potentialities, 
physical, intellectual and spiritual, to the end that we may 
acquire power for doing duty constantly and efficiently all 
through life. True education is not limited to acquiring 
knowledge or becoming learned in the conventional sense. 
It must form within us the vital principles by which con- 
duct, service, sacrifice and use are inspired and embodied 
in actions which make up the whole duty of life. To the 
individual men there comes a time when the natural body 
ceases to be the instrument of his will and conscience in 
active duty ; but his deeds and example live and germinate 
in the lives of others ; and thus the evolution of mankind 
is secured. If life and education are identical, then educa- 
tion and duty are inseparable ; the one is necessary to the 
other for the fulfilment of the law of our being. Of course 
Education in this sense is not mere Instruction. One 
must differentiate largely between Education and Instruc- 
tion. The principles of evolution, as demonstrated by 
Darwin, Fiske and others, have illuminated many dark 
and mysterious operations in Nature, which through all 
the ages had been unintelligible ; but in no field of philo- 
sophy have they shed greater light than on the laws which 
govern the growth and development of the physical, 



10 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

mental and spiritual nature of man. Education has be- 
come an infinitely more important part of life since we 
know more of the physical and psychical nature of the 
human being. 

We can understand now why knowledge derived from 
mere instruction does not materially affect or improve the 
moral and spiritual nature of the young. We can under- 
stand also why it not unfrequently happens that children 
of ignorant and uncultivated, though devoted and good, 
parents, have displayed an earnest desire for self -improve- 
ment and culture and exemplary conduct through life. 
The human infant, though possessed of the highest organ- 
isation and potentialities, is the most helpless of all young 
animals, and has to be cared for and tended at an age 
when all other animals are able to take care of themselves. 
The complex organisation of a young child, body, mind, 
and spirit, needs a long period of adjustment to its en- 
vironment in civilized society ; and the higher the civiliza- 
tion, the more thorough the adjustment must be. Society, 
institutions, customs, commerce, industry, methods, pro- 
cesses, laws, constitutions, ambitions and aspirations in 
our day are the inheritance of accumulated human experi- 
ence through all the ages up to the present time. To ad- 
just the child of to-day to the infinite complexity of life, 
so that his subsequent duty may be adequately performed, 
needs not only more time, but more scientific methods, 
based on the knowledge we now possess of child-nature on 
the one hand and the laws of Nature on the other, and, 
further, is dependent on the development of the spiritual 
faculty or conscience which should guide and govern every 
civilized being through a long and healthy life. 

According to the adjustment needed to adapt the child 
of to-day to the life and duty of to-day must the 
traditions of the past, both theoretical and practical, give 
way to the theory and practice adapted to a new age. 

" Old things have passed away, all things have become 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 11 

new," so far at least as the material life of man is con- 
cerned. The masses of the people in the most advanced 
countries have come into their political inheritance at last 
— that of self-government. With that has come the neces- 
sity, — the imperative and vital necessity of preparing each 
individual for the time when he will come of age to enter 
upon his inheritance. This preparation cannot be efficient 
if we withhold from him that natural and inalienable 
right, which no man or society of men has given or can 
give, the right of opportunity and means in childhood and 
youth for the growth of his physical, mental and spiritual 
nature. This opportunity is the birthright of every child 
in a civilized State. Rightly understood, Education is 
this opportunity. It is the drawing-out, evolving, un- 
folding of the inherent powers and faculties of the child 
with which the Creator has endowed him in His own 
Image and Likeness. The powers and faculties to be 
educated are manifold. Through them the child is en- 
titled to the inheritance of scientific knowledge, of the 
laws of Nature and their operation, of physical health and 
strength, of manual skill and aptitude, of the appreciation 
and conception of the beautiful in Art and Life, in Litera- 
ture, in human institutions, in duty to his fellow- 
creatures, in religious life and conduct. Instruction will 
not bring a child to his inheritance in these things. In- 
struction is putting something in ; education is drawing 
out something already there, that it may be used, strength- 
ened, developed, expanded continuously by self-activity; 
the coming into possession of the inborn power, that it 
may be used by the individual man for the benefit of his 
country and the human race. Education in this sense 
leads to Duty, which is the outward active embodiment of 
every inward and spiritual grace, and to the acquisition of 
knowledge and higher intelligence all through life. 

I think the term education has been persistently mis- 
applied in describing what was merely a theory and prac- 



12 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

tice of instruction in mediaeval times. In the history of 
that period we have no record of any human institutions 
or of a system of Government based on any principle other 
than that of " Might is right," and " Force the Remedy " 
to put down what the autocratic rulers thought wrong. 
Wise and learned men have, however, lived in every age, 
and have contributed, according to the knowledge of the 
times in which they lived, some immortal services to man- 
kind. Marcus Aurelius is a high type of such philosophers, 
and they have, happily for mankind, never been wholly 
wanting, even in the darkest ages. The scientific, intellec- 
tual and spiritual insight of such men inspires us with 
reverence and homage to-day. Teachers in the highest 
sense they were and still remain for us in their works. 
The revival of learning came through the ecclesiasticism 
of the Renaissance, and never penetrated far afield beyond 
the portals of monastic institutions. The theory and prac- 
tice of teaching were narrow in purpose and extent; but 
within their limits they gave to the world precious know- 
ledge and truths, amid much that, in the light of our day, 
is neither knowledge nor truth. Up to, and during, the 
period when our noble Universities were founded and their 
Colleges increased, bringing to our land the inheritance 
of learning from all ages, the conception of education was 
narrow and exclusive. Milton, in his " Tractate on 
Education," stated that education is that " which fits a 
man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all 
the offices, private and public, of both peace and war." 
Yet the only men in Milton's mind were of the professions 
of lawyers, clergymen, physicians, soldiers and gentlemen, 
and a " Gentleman " is defined by Milton as a man " who 
retires himself to the enjoyment of ease and luxury." 
These five estates constituted the educated classes, and no 
doubt he included statesmen, the then ruling class, under 
the definition of " gentlemen." Since those days the sixth 
estate — the greatest and most powerful of all — that of the 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 13 

world's producers, constructors, distributors and consumers 
of the fruits of knowledge and of the fruits of the earth, 
has acquired its inherent right to political freedom and, by 
degrees, its full share of political power and control. The 
spirit of knowledge held captive for ages by the powerful 
and privileged few has been liberated and is gradually 
" spreading over the earth as the waters cover the sea." 

It is almost beyond human comprehension that so many 
scholarly men of the classes I have named should have 
held knowledge and learning as too sacred for use in the 
ordinary affairs of life. I know an eminent scholar in 
America — an Englishman, it is true — formerly President 
of a great university in America and a very charming 
man, who declared his regret that the higher mathematics 
had been found useful in the study of electrical appliances, 
being of opinion that " as the utility of a subject increases, 
its educational value decreases." Even Matthew Arnold, 
himself a promoter and Inspector of National Education, 
asked the question in one of his notable essays : " If 
England were swallowed by the sea to-morrow, which of 
the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the 
love, interest and admiration of mankind — the England of 
the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, a time 
of splendid spiritual effort, but when coal and our in- 
dustrial operations dependent on coal were very little 
developed." Such views confirm one's surmise that the 
acquisition of learning and knowledge by the theory and 
practice of the older Universities and schools, uncorrected 
by post-graduate studies and experience of life, was 
not a liberal education in the true sense. And is it not 
true at this day that such methods — the academic methods 
— so far as they now exist in practice (and who will say 
they do not and that they are not beloved of many?) 
partake more of the character of instruction than of 
education? It is surely true that our public schools, and 
private schools modelled on them, and also the public 



14 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

elementary schools, have all of them, in more or less at- 
tenuated degrees, the academic tinge in the method of 
teaching and subjects taught. I am fully convinced that 
the comparatively superficial, and therefore unsatisfactory, 
results of our present system of training in public ele- 
mentary and higher elementary and secondary schools is 
owing to the fact that both theory and practice are seriously 
imperfect. I believe that Education is neglected in favour 
of mere instruction — the putting into the brain of the 
child what he is not able to assimilate, instead of drawing 
out his mental activity and will power, and directing, 
nourishing, and exercising all his faculties to fit him 
physically, intellectually and morally, for duty and service 
all through life. 

I am deeply impressed with the fact that the public 
Elementary and higher schools in every country have 
hitherto failed — a large proportion altogether and the rest 
in a lesser degree possibly — to turn out their scholars even 
moderately well-equipped to face the world and take up its 
work in the right spirit, with proper ambition and self- 
reliance. I do not say they have not been instructed and 
have not acquired some knowledge on many subjects, some 
useful and some not. But I am certain there is a lack of 
thoroughness all round, and a lamentable absence of zeal 
and ambition to pursue self-education on leaving school- 
life. The whole effect of the teaching seems to be that 
a task of a more or less unpleasant sort has been got 
through : it is a good thing to have got done with it, at 
any rate in that way. I received an unexpected confirma- 
tion of these impressions the other day, as I was making 
notes for my address to-night, from a far higher authority 
than I could ever be — one of the ablest and most successful 
of Head-masters in a great higher elementary school in a 
large city. I had written to him about the great Franco- 
British Exhibition, 1908 : one section of the Exhibition 
will be devoted to a demonstration of British Education 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 15 

from top to bottom, and of this section I have the 
honour to be chairman. My friend wrote as follows : " I 
hope the teachers of this country will be able to learn 
something from the Education section of the Exhibition 
over which you will preside. To my mind the greatest 
obstacle to the true educational progress in this country is 
the multiplicity of subjects that have to be taught the 
children under fourteen years of age, at which time it is 
of the greatest importance that a sure foundation should 
be laid, and a desire created in the minds of scholars for 
further studies by a fair mastery of a few subjects rather 
than a smattering of many. The teacher has not time to 
allow the boy to think and work for himself. The boy no 
sooner meets with difficulty than he seeks help, which the 
teacher gives him because he has so much ground to cover. 
There is no self-reliance, no strength of mind — that can 
only come, like strength of body, from exercise — and the 
pupil does not experience that sweet delight that one feels 
after a difficulty has been overcome by one's own effort. 
It is this delight that nourishes the desire for further 
improvement." 

This is a very serious expert opinion formed after using 
the method of instruction prescribed for all authorities 
under the Education Acts of this country. It may be 
that " Polite Learning," as Milton styled the education of 
the privileged few in his day, may still be taught in the 
Public Schools of the wealthy class without serious harm 
to the country. But in the great democracy, the character 
of the nation must be formed, and its future power, pros- 
perity and happiness can only be secured, by educational 
progress through scientific methods and on principles that 
shall cause each child to come into his inheritance of 
trained powers, and by the application of these to our 
inheritance of Nature, Art, Science, Literature, and 
Religion, so that the child is induced to love them, to 
understand them, and embody them in life and duty. 



16 EDUCATION AND DUTY 

How can the regeneration of mankind — or, if you prefer 
it, the evolution of mankind to a higher life — be attained 
otherwise ? 

The decree has gone forth throughout the world, and 
has resounded for ages : " It is not the will of my Eather 
in Heaven that one of these little ones shall perish." It is 
to belittle this great truth if we suppose it can be satisfied 
by nourishing the body only, and preventing cruelty and 
starvation and disease. That, indeed, is the least that can 
be done. But the great thing is to save the mind and 
heart and soul of the child, through a true education, by 
the evolution of all his powers and faculties through child- 
hood : on the lines of Nature, by scientific methods, 
manual work, physical exercises and loving ministrations 
of teachers adequately trained to the duty from the love of 
it. This is the simplest, the least expensive, the most 
profitable; for co-operation, self-help, the eager joy of the 
young to use their faculties, will lighten the labour. Such 
an education up to fourteen years of age will secure the 
foundation for any superstructure on the same lines of 
natural laws. The acquisition of knowledge, the joy of 
wholesome life, the duties of citizenship, skill and interest 
in work, the desire to do always the best, the inspiration of 
self-reliance, courage, honour, love of truth and justice — 
all these potential qualities in the nature of a child will by 
such education develop a true man and a true woman. 
The redemption of the adult from hereditary evil can, it 
seems to me, be accomplished only in this way in the 
plastic period of youth. 

The conception of God and of the future life, and the 
knowledge of the relation of children to the true purpose 
and duty of their earthly life, will grow through the 
plastic state of youth, with the strengthening of the facul- 
ties that comprehend them, to become fixed habits and 
principles in the matured men and women. No teaching 
is true education that does not " inspire the young with 



EDUCATION AND DUTY 17 

the belief that life is a great and noble calling ; not a mean 
and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we 
can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." 

What a noble calling is that of the teacher of youth, 
who believes in the perfectibility of human nature, and 
that in his hands is the plastic mind and spirit of which 
it is to be formed ! It is better to make school life, from 
the first step of the ladder, an inspiration to the child to 
prevent evil, than to rely on the exhortations of the pulpit 
to try to cure it in the adult. 

I have seen schools and methods of education which 
were an inspiration; and I have never seen such joyous 
intelligence, such appreciation of knowledge and thorough- 
ness in acquiring it, as when the school system is based on 
the training of the faculties as the first and foremost 
object. In such training knowledge is inevitably acquired, 
and thoroughly — for the subjects of general knowledge 
are the material used in forming and strengthening the 
faculties. This is the one thing needful, and all things 
will be added to it in a life of ambitious self-education, 
and in the faithful performance of Duty which must 
necessarily follow on true education. 

In this way alone can hereditary evil be checked and its 
stream eventually dried up. There is no land or people so 
fitting as our own for its realization. We have been the 
last to deal with this greatest of all questions — National 
Education. Let us be the first to show that the way to a 
purer and higher National life lies through the schools of 
our children. 



I 



